Quick show of hands: how many folks know the term "WinTel"? I’m betting most of you. Here’s the next new catch-phrase to remember: "Goople". I guess it could be "Apgle" or "ApOOgle", but I like "Goople". I’m talking of course about the Google integration that continues to grow in the Apple world. Case in point today, and very relevant to mobile folks: Google just added CalDAV support to the Google Calendar, bringing a two-way sync Google Calendar events to iCal and back again. And of course, the funny bone is connected to the… iCal is connected to iTunes, which in turn brings Google Calendar events to the iPhone. Yup, this solution still requires a cable tether between a Mac and an iPhone, but it addresses one of the reasons folks won’t move to a Google solution for calendar events. There’s still some known issues to be addressed, but this is a solid free start with core functionality adding to existing for-pay choices like Exchange and MobileMe.

Although I moved from Exchange to Google last October, this missing calendar functionality hasn’t been much of a pain for two reasons. The mobile Google Calendar interface works nearly as fast and as well as an actual client for one. Second, there’s no lack of third party solutions that sync the Google Calendar with Outlook. Google has their own free app for this configuration, but there’s other options that work directly and indirectly with mobile handsets like CalGoo and GooSync. Having used both Outlook (for many years) and iCal, it’s clear that Outlook offers far more functionality. However, for the basics, iCal is usable… especially for folks that want to use Google for their main calendar repository.

Update: looks this is just a baby step towards the final goal. Steve Rubel tweeted that this solution doesn’t work with the iPhone, just with iCal, based on this Gizmodo post. Sure enough, I’ve spent the last 30 minutes futzing with it and it’s true: the events sync between Google Calendar and iCal, but that’s it. No iPhone support at the moment. Perhaps this is something we’ll see in the iPhone 2.1 firmware?